Archive for Tutorials

Debugging a memory increase, using Generational Analysis

November 19th, 2013 Posted by: - posted under:Articles » Tutorials - 6 Comments

I was recently working on an internal project for Burnside Digital, and decided it was time to do some memory profiling to make sure that I didn’t have any leaks. I ran the program with the ‘Leaks’ tool of instruments, and as I was watching the Live Bytes column, I saw the number of Bytes being used, slowly but surely increasing as time went on. Instruments wasn’t detecting any leaks, so I knew this wasn’t going to be a straightforward leak …

    READ MORE

    DICE+, rocketships and a giveaway.

    July 6th, 2013 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 7 Comments


    I received my developer kit a couple weeks ago and was excited to get to testing. What is DICE+? DICE+ is a bluetooth connected, smart, 6 sided die that is made out of materials safe to roll directly on your devices. It has a 20hr battery which powers a bunch of cool sensors like accelerometers, magnetic field sensor, touch sensitive faces, and a few more. The built in anti-cheat protection makes sure each roll is …

      READ MORE

      Tutorial: Asynchronous HTTP Client Using NSOperationQueue

      October 19th, 2012 Posted by: - posted under:Articles » Tutorials - 11 Comments

      Introduction
      Recently here at ELC, we’ve been working on an app that requires a lot of server interaction, which has been a learning experience for managing threading, server load and connectivity. In order to keep the app performant and responsive while sending a large number of requests and aggregating a large set of data, our team had to intelligently manage and prioritize network interactions.
      This is where helps out. This class relies heavily on Grand Central Dispatch …

        READ MORE

        Adding an OpenGL ES view to your project using NinevehGL

        September 7th, 2012 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 7 Comments

        Recently I came across an openGL ES 2.0 engine that made setup, displaying and animating of 3D objects a breeze, called .  This 3D engine has many great features including a full multithreading environment, to keep the main run loop free during object rendering,  motion tweening, object groupings, custom lighting, materials and textures, custom shader support,  and native support for augmented reality, just to name a few. Another major benefit is the ability to import both wavefront …

          READ MORE

          Unzipping Files In iOS Using ZipArchive

          August 13th, 2012 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 20 Comments

          In this tutorial, I am going to demonstrate how you can zip and unzip files from within your iOS applications. We will be using a third party library called ZipArchive to achieve this. While there are a couple solutions out there to zip and unzip files, I feel that the ZipArchive library was the fastest and easiest way to get up and running.
          Why Would I want To Unzip Files?
          That’s a great question. There are a number of …

            READ MORE

            Using Method-Swizzling to help with Test Driven Development

            August 8th, 2012 Posted by: - posted under:Articles » Tutorials - 1 Comment

            Introduction
            In this blog post I will demonstrate how to mock HTTP requests using an Objective-C runtime dynamic method replacement technique known as method swizzling. I will show how this can be used in tandem with some unit test technologies to help with development of iOS web-service client side code.
            In this example, the actual work of the HTTP request is embodied in my AsyncURLConnection class. It uses NSURLConnection to perform an NSURLRequest in an asynchronous manner, using completion handler blocks to return …

              READ MORE

              How to Add GPS to Your iOS App – Part 1

              June 4th, 2012 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 10 Comments

              In Part 1 of this series, I will introduce you to the very basics of CoreLocation services and getting the location of the device currently being used.
              About CoreLocation
              The CoreLocation framework provides your app with the ability to get a device’s current location, provided the user of the device has granted your app access to that information.
              Location services are provided in two major ways using this framework:

              Standard Location Services– This service provides the most accurate location information using a variety of …

                READ MORE

                Using XCode 4 Snippets

                December 6th, 2011 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 14 Comments

                Recently, I came across and fell in love with the idea of using XCode 4 snippets. Up until I read the post, I had heard they existed, but never really tried them. After reading the post, I began using his snippets as well as started creating my own. Now, I would say that my work-flow is faster than ever.
                Here is a quick demonstration of the power of snippets
                Type:

                ttt

                It generates:

                #pragma mark – UITableView …

                  READ MORE

                  Making UITableViews look not so plain

                  November 19th, 2011 Posted by: - posted under:Featured » Tutorials - 8 Comments

                  As most of you probably know, UITableView’s are incredibly useful and versatile views to be using in your applications.
                  If you have ever tried to customize a UITableView though, you know that as soon as you start adding lots of UIViews, UILabels, and UImageViews to a cells ContentView, that these tableviews start to scroll slower and slower, and become choppier and choppier.
                  What we are going to explore today is how to remedy that situation.
                  To download the entire XCode project, you can …

                    READ MORE

                    How to import contacts into the iPhone Simulator

                    November 9th, 2011 Posted by: - posted under:Tutorials - 10 Comments

                    If you’re working with AddressBook.framework chances are you’ll want to import your own data to test against when you’re in the simulator. Without being able to sync with iTunes or iCloud you may think you’re stuck entering in addresses manually; not only is that a huge pain, but there are probably lots of edge cases already in your address book you wouldn’t necessarily think of.
                    Fortunately there’s another option, with a tool called . Download it, run it …

                      READ MORE